But....what about Applejack? How did that vector even get there? That has to be done by a third party, don't they give them vectors to use? Why would they leave out a main character? Well, now I'll have to pick up both the G1 paper AND the Minty paper.

Yeah, I noticed AJ got shafted again. And it can't be that Minty took her place cause Pinkie is on there 3 different ways and Twilight and RD are each on there at least twice. Even Fluttershy is on there twice.

eeeee the g1 paper, so cute!! I hope we get that over here. And the Minty paper is adorable!!! Weird that Applejack got left out.. I wonder if her and Minty's vectors somehow got mixed up? Since Minty's vector is just a recoloured Applejack? Not sure how that could happen, though :s Weird. But nice to see Minty showing up in something like this!!

Does this mean the Zulily art is officially licensed because it's now on a mug sold at Target? Or does it mean this mug is unlicensed?

Zak! has the MLP license as they've released G4 plates and cups in the past, so both must be officially licensed. It may be like what the G4 license seems to be, where they give you a bunch of images and tell you to work with it.